POLAR PLUNGING IN the U.S. supposedly started in Boston in 1904, but winter swimming has existed in northern countries as long as the ice has tempted the challenge. In the Bay Area, several groups of people performed the ritual, affirming their existence for another year.

The first splash of the New Year happened at 9:43 a.m. Monday. Ninety-nine swimmers jumped into the water from the island of Alcatraz for the annual 1.5-mile swim to San Francisco.

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Ruth Dusseault is an investigative reporter and multimedia journalist focused on environment and energy. Her position is supported by the California local news fellowship, a statewide initiative spearheaded by UC Berkeley aimed at supporting local news platforms. While a student at UC Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism (c’23), Ruth developed stories about the social and environmental circumstances of contaminated watersheds around the Great Lakes, Mississippi River and Florida’s Lake Okeechobee. Her thesis explored rights of nature laws in small rural communities. She is a former assistant professor and artist in residence at Georgia Tech’s School of Architecture, and uses photography, film and digital storytelling to report on the engineered systems that undergird modern life.